


make a hole, dig out your father

by Anastasia_G



Category: Legacies (TV 2018), The Originals (TV), The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Daddy Issues, F/M, Kinda, Underage - Freeform, age gap, alaric lusts after hope, but is also terrified, hints of incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-22
Updated: 2018-10-22
Packaged: 2019-08-05 16:26:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16371059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anastasia_G/pseuds/Anastasia_G
Summary: He didn’t want to live and see her meaning unfurl. He wouldn’t survive her, whatever she was. Not as himself, not the way he was.





	make a hole, dig out your father

_Look at us, she said. We are all of us in this room_

_still waiting to be transformed. This is why we search for love._

_We search for it all our lives,_

_even after we find it._

 

— Louise Glück

* * *

  
  
The last time he felt this way, Klaus Mikaelson was inside him.

It seemed lifetimes ago that the Original had swept into Mystic Falls like a shadow stealing down from the mountains, filling every crevice, darkening every nook. He doesn’t like to remember that time, but he has no choice. Each day Klaus walked in his body left a memory. Sometimes he wonders if Klaus left something else behind, some small trace of himself that latched on, slowly feeding, growing. Some nights he scratched at his own chest, like he could dig his heart out and be free.

He wonders if this is why, when he first laid eyes on Hope Mikaelson, red and freckled and laughing, he’d unconsciously reached for the stake in his jacket. She was the sun setting east, the world gone flat. He’d nudged the stake at himself. He didn’t want to live and see her meaning unfurl. He wouldn’t survive her, whatever she was. Not as himself, not the way he was.

He felt it the day he and Caroline opened the doors of the Salvatore Boarding School and wide-eyed young supernaturals poured in. He watched them cross the green lawns and suddenly he was back at Mystic Falls High, looking through Klaus’ eyes looking through his, watching Elena and Bonnie and their friends. All that youth, resplendent as a banquet.

One snapped neck, one opened vein, and he’d taste freedom.

 

***

 

He tried to confide in Caroline once but she’d brushed him off. Every vampire in existence had some part of a Mikaelson inside them, she’d pointed out in that breezy way of hers. At least  _ his _ life wasn’t tied to theirs.

_But I still feel - I feel_ \- he’d implored, finding and losing the words before he could speak them. Try as he might he couldn’t describe it. A bond that left no mark. A ghost of a tether. How do you both fear something and sometimes...and sometimes...

He watched distaste creep over Caroline’s face, her fingers grow white-knuckled around her mug. He’d seen that look before, back when Klaus had showered her with gifts.

Loathing, but also pity.

He felt seen, if not heard. A shadowy satisfaction.

  
  


***

The summer after her father and uncle kill themselves, Hope returns to school on the wings of a storm. He sees her in the doorway, drenched, wild-eyed, lit up blue with lightning. He retreats into Headmaster mode, offers her a polite welcome, offers her food and a hot drink. Her face shutters close and she gives him a look of anger so pure he feels a jolt in his spine. For a moment, he’s looking at Klaus Mikaelson himself.

It’s gone in a flash and she’s herself again- whatever that is. Her expression grows clear, lofty almost. Like she’s older than him by centuries. “No thanks, Mr Saltzman _ , _ ” she says before turning on her heel, leaving puddles as footsteps.

Later, on a whiskey-sodden night, he thinks about grabbing a handful of copper hair, he thinks about slamming her invincible shoulders into the wall, about demanding respect, demanding restitution for her father’s crimes.

_ She’s just a girl, _ he tells himself.  _ Innocent. _

He crushes the heel of his hands into his eyes and redness floods his vision, dark like blood, like her rain-soaked hair.

 

***

 

The school term is underway and Caroline is gone again. She travels often now, savoring the contours of a strange freedom she’s never had before. His daughters are petulant. They resent him for her absence, that he can’t make her stay.

Their family dinners are strained affairs. Josie ignores his questions while Lizzie plays on her phone. One night he invites Hope to join them. The tribrid eats quietly, speaks when spoken to, and compliments the food. Her manners are old world and immaculate, unnatural in one so young. He's tempted to tell her to slouch in her chair, ignore her food for Instagram like Lizzie does. It might be easier if she just let herself be as normal a teen girl as possible.

_ Easier for her, or easier for you? _

The food turns to lead in his mouth. He feels Klaus again, scratching behind his eyes. Hope looks at him strangely. For a moment, he thinks she knows.

_ Knows what, exactly? _

“Ugh, looks like daddy ate too much meatloaf again,” Lizzie complains, exasperated.

He barely hears her. He’s broken out in a cold sweat. He excuses himself and retires for the evening.

He can’t stop thinking about the way Hope cut her steak into perfect, bite-size pieces.

 

***

 

They make it two weeks into the new term before the inevitable occurs. An older student, a vampire, sees fit to jeer at her lineage, to call her dead father a failure. Hope flays the skin off his bones.

Caroline’s still traveling so he calls Freya. She heals the student and he talks to the young vampire's irate sire, assuring them it won’t happen again.

After her aunt leaves, he summons Hope into his office. She drops into a chair, black-clad, her perfect posture abandoned. But she doesn’t look like a disrespectful adolescent. She looks like a lynx, ceding impudence as a gift.

“So, what’s my punishment going to be?” she asks, like a challenge. Like she thinks nothing can break her. Like she’s inviting him to try.

Klaus is in the room again.

“I don’t know,” he counters. “What do you think it should be?”

She makes an impatient sound. “Lock me up in the basement? Suspend my outdoor privileges? Bind my magic for a few weeks?”

“How about teaching you to defend yourself without magic?”

“Why?” she scoffs.

“So the next time someone pisses you off, you break their nose and call it a day.”

“My dad would’ve killed him where he stood.”

“Your dad isn’t here,” he says, more loudly than he intended. Like banishing a ghost.

“Hope...,” he sighs, rubbing his forehead. “I’m trying to help you.”

_ Is that what you call it, mate? _

She crosses her arms, expression still mutinous. “Fine,” she says at last. “I promised Dad I would try at school. So I’ll try. For his sake.”

“For his sake,” Alaric echoes. And the ghost laughs in his head.

 

***

 

They practice out by the lake. 

He digs up the old boxing gloves he’d once let Elena use, back when he thought he could fight off the world with his fists. But where the doppelgänger had been hesitant, afraid of herself, Hope is a revelation.

Her instincts are strong, her movements powerful, her attitude brazen. She was born for this. The thought makes him sick.

“You’re getting a little old,” she says with just a hint of cockiness in her eyes. His limbs freeze in place for a second and that’s all the time she needs to leap into the air, to throw him down like a bolt of lightning. She crouches over him, stake raised, eyes golden, teeth bared.

_ Do it _ , he almost tells her.  _ Make a hole in me and dig out your father. _

Hope drops the stake and scrambles to her feet, tugging him up with her. Her voice is ragged with concern. “Are you ok? I’m so sorry I didn’t mean-,”

He assures her he’s fine, but she’s inconsolable. She sobs until she nearly wretches. He is forced to put his arms around her. She clings to the lapels of his jacket like a lifeline, emptying her tears down his chest.

“It’s okay, I’m fine, I’m right here, Hope,” he soothes. “I’m not going anywhere.”

She huddles closer and Alaric shudders. It’s like cradling a severed limb. He’d never hold his own daughters this way. They’d never ask him to.

Hope clings to him one last time, then pulls away.

“I’m so sorry,” she sniffs. “That will never happen again.”

 

***

 

It’s a full moon and the werewolves are chained in the basement. In his study, he drains glass after glass of scotch and listens to them howl. Come morning, he’d go unlock them one by one, just in time for class.

He remembers his first years in college, the zest of new classes, coming up with lesson plans and studying facilitation methods. Teachers change the world, he’d been told. Or maybe he’d heard wrong. Maybe the world changes them. The world changes everything, the world never rests.

_ You’re getting a little old. _

There’s a knock on his door and Hope Mikaelson stands there taking in the sight of him, the uncapped liquor, the empty glass.

Something flickers across her face, like she’s seen a ghost.

“I couldn’t sleep,” she tells him, arms wrapped around herself. “I thought maybe I’d go down and - and see some of the wolves? Help them stay calm?”

“You’re a wolf yourself, Hope,” he slurs. “They’d kill themselves trying to get at you.”

She flinches, and he feels rotten. Rotten from the inside out. “Go back to bed.”

His eyes track the flame of her hair until it disappears down the dark hallway. She could transform, if she wanted to. Turn wolf and tear out his throat, then go down to the basement and set the others free. He could picture them. A great legion of wolves running under the moon, shimmering, deadly, hungry for the world. Maybe that’s what Klaus saw, all those years ago.

_ Maybe? _

 

***

 

Caroline won’t answer his calls. She’s somewhere in Italy, last he heard. She’d mentioned wanting to visit Tuscany. Stefan had promised to take her. His daughters ignore him, they cut their skirts too short, get detention, laugh in his face.

He loves them with his whole heart, but sometimes - sometimes he wishes he could throw them into the world, the darkness and the violence, the mundane cruelty, and let them remake themselves. Perhaps then he would recognize them. Perhaps they would know each other.

He visits Tyler Lockwood’s grave. Klaus had walked in his body too. He wonders why he’d never befriended the boy, why he’d never bought him a beer, asked him how his life was going. He’d give anything to have back those days, when he fought monsters and taught History. When the keys he carried didn’t fit inside dungeons.

He wants to kick up grave dirt, to demand they all return to life.  _ Tyler, Jenna, Isobel, Jo. _ A litany of missed chances parading before his eyes.

When he returns to the school it’s storming again. The kids have decided to throw a party in his absence. Josie and Lizzie hold court by the bar, while Hope straddles one of the werewolves - he can’t remember his name - on the couch. She looks up, mouth red with kissing, her thighs still locked around the boy.

Everyone else scrambles away, hoping to escape detention. His daughters are among the last to leave but his eyes stay on Hope, the way she slinks off her paramour’s body like she knows every crevice, every nook. The way the boy looks dazed, like she’d entered him somehow.

“Your father would have killed him,” he says, when they’re alone. Hope blanches, then slaps him hard. She hasn’t moved. She lets her magic do it for her. The sting of insult runs down his face, down his back, down his legs and between them.

“Don’t you  _ dare _ mention my father,” she growls, advancing on him. “I’ll burn you, I’ll burn your stupid, bitchy daughters, I’ll burn _everything_.”

She sweeps past him and his knees nearly buckle. His hands reach, shaking, for the stake in his jacket. He wishes he had the courage to see it through.

 

***

 

_ In whiskey-soaked dreams he finds her differently, sitting by the lake. A girl abandoned, orphaned by the world. He’s strong enough to pick her up. He kisses her face, her nose, her eyelids, her lily forehead, everywhere but her mouth. _

_ And Hope curls into his chest, whispers, breathes against his neck like the child she is.  _ Daddy. You came.  _  He  carries her home. _

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Julie Plec is salt of the earth and I'm counting the days until she's unemployed. In the meantime, Hope x Alaric is the only thing about "Legacies" that's even remotely interesting. I won't be watching the show, and neither should you. If y'all aren't old enough to remember when Klaus possessed Alaric for a while, look it up. This was inspired by my trash sis thefudge's amazing Vader x Leia fic "a dream, an evil one", which I highly recommend if you're into quality trash. I didn't edit this too much, but hope (pun not intended lol) it was still enjoyable. Lemme know your thoughts!


End file.
